Sure, God Forgives Our Sins, But Does He Forget Them?
Christians firmly believe that God forgives our sins, not because of our merits or reform efforts, but because of Christ.
But do we truly believe that God also puts those sins aside -- that he forgets them? I think the most difficult thing for which we ever trust God is the matter of forgiveness.
Sure, we accept the Scriptures that tell us he forgives our sins when we confess them and come to him through Christ.
(See Romans 5:8 and Romans 6:23 for biblical support of this.
) Sure, its easy for Christians to tell others that we've "been saved" or had our sins forgiven.
But deep down in our hearts, we keep coming back to sins that he has forgiven and revisiting them again and again, don't we? Or is that just me?? The essence of God's grace is both simple and so complex we really cannot understand it.
It involves the Infinite breaking into our finite lives and making fundamental, eternal changes to our lives: We are cleansed and the "debt" of our sins is paid in Christ.
But back to this matter of forgiveness.
Does God's forgiveness also include divine forgetting? It would seem to, from such Bible passages as Hebrews 8:12, in which God says: "For I will be merciful toward their iniquities, and I will remember their sins no more.
" (That quotation is taken from the New Revised Standard Version.
) The concept that God not only forgives but forgets our sins isn't new to the New Testament, however.
The quotation from Hebrews 8 is taken from the Old Testament, specifically from the Prophet Jeremiah, chapter 31 and verse 34.
Nevertheless, it may be mind boggling to really understand that God forgets as well as forgives the sins of those who come to him, confess their sins, and repents of them.
I think it's very hard for us to grasp this reality of our relationship with God because we humans are limited by our finite minds.
God being infinite, his thoughts and his ways are "above and beyond" our thoughts and ways (see Isaiah 55:8-9).
Does this mean we have no way to understand God, no way to know him? No, it means we are limited in our knowledge of God to what he reveals about himself and to what we are able to comprehend.
It may be easy to forgive those who have wronged us, but generally not so much when it comes to the forgetting part.
How often have you heard, or even said, something like, "Yes, I can forgive you, but I can't every forget what you've done"? With God's help and by his grace, we can get over such things.
He enables us to forget, just as he chooses both to forgive our sins and forget them -- they are gone, we are justified, which in simplest terms means "just as if I'd never sinned" in God's mind.
That's awesome.
That's also pretty cool for us, isn't it?
But do we truly believe that God also puts those sins aside -- that he forgets them? I think the most difficult thing for which we ever trust God is the matter of forgiveness.
Sure, we accept the Scriptures that tell us he forgives our sins when we confess them and come to him through Christ.
(See Romans 5:8 and Romans 6:23 for biblical support of this.
) Sure, its easy for Christians to tell others that we've "been saved" or had our sins forgiven.
But deep down in our hearts, we keep coming back to sins that he has forgiven and revisiting them again and again, don't we? Or is that just me?? The essence of God's grace is both simple and so complex we really cannot understand it.
It involves the Infinite breaking into our finite lives and making fundamental, eternal changes to our lives: We are cleansed and the "debt" of our sins is paid in Christ.
But back to this matter of forgiveness.
Does God's forgiveness also include divine forgetting? It would seem to, from such Bible passages as Hebrews 8:12, in which God says: "For I will be merciful toward their iniquities, and I will remember their sins no more.
" (That quotation is taken from the New Revised Standard Version.
) The concept that God not only forgives but forgets our sins isn't new to the New Testament, however.
The quotation from Hebrews 8 is taken from the Old Testament, specifically from the Prophet Jeremiah, chapter 31 and verse 34.
Nevertheless, it may be mind boggling to really understand that God forgets as well as forgives the sins of those who come to him, confess their sins, and repents of them.
I think it's very hard for us to grasp this reality of our relationship with God because we humans are limited by our finite minds.
God being infinite, his thoughts and his ways are "above and beyond" our thoughts and ways (see Isaiah 55:8-9).
Does this mean we have no way to understand God, no way to know him? No, it means we are limited in our knowledge of God to what he reveals about himself and to what we are able to comprehend.
It may be easy to forgive those who have wronged us, but generally not so much when it comes to the forgetting part.
How often have you heard, or even said, something like, "Yes, I can forgive you, but I can't every forget what you've done"? With God's help and by his grace, we can get over such things.
He enables us to forget, just as he chooses both to forgive our sins and forget them -- they are gone, we are justified, which in simplest terms means "just as if I'd never sinned" in God's mind.
That's awesome.
That's also pretty cool for us, isn't it?
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